Jason

(This is my fourth post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

Jason was only in my class for a few weeks. Four weeks, five, maybe. He came in unexpectedly one day (just showing up at my classroom door with the secretary, as new students tended to do). His cousin began the same day in the class next door.

Jason was a fabulous reader, placed in my super-high group (and in fact, I never got around to testing him all the way, to see how "high" he really was.) His math skills, however, were very low. Basic concepts confused him. Maybe he had been at a school before that focused even more on reading than we did. Maybe they didn't do enough math in his old first grade. Or, maybe he was just not a mathematician. I don't know. I worked individually with him, but he wasn't there long enough for me to really get to know him.

Anyway, one day, after having been in the room for weeks, Jason looked over at the wall and saw our Weekly Reader issue with Obama on the cover.

"Hey!" he shouted with a grin. "I know that guy!"
"Yeah?" I asked.
"Yeah! We talked about him at my old school!"
"Tell me about him," I suggested.
"That's 'Bama! I voted for him! I want him to be president!"
"Well, he is," I reassured Jason.
"Yeah..." Jason responded, still looking adoringly at the picture.

Jason got very excited about things in a very adorable way.

During science one day we were doing observations. He came up to me with the science material and started talking and exclaiming about the object he was observing.

"It's so happy!" he shouted, I think talking about the whole situation, not the specific object he was observing. "It's so cool!" he continued.
"Yeah?" I prompted him.
"Yeah...I think I'm going to explode of happiness..." he sighed with satisfaction under his breath, as he walked back to his desk.

Unfortunately, Jason left as suddenly as he arrived. One day he was absent, and his cousin told me he had moved. "Moved, like, to a new house?" I asked, "Or moved to a new school."
"He moved far away," she answered, shrugging her shoulders. And, I never saw Jason again. His cousin ended up moving a few weeks later as well.

Wherever they went, I hope they're living together still. Jason was a little spacey, a little scatterbrained. His cousin took good care of him. They had lived together when they both went to Awesome School, and I think helped each other in different ways. (Jason helped with the reading, his cousin helped with developing social skills.)